In the Time of Greenbloom (32 page)

“What are you drinking?” asked Greenbloom.

“Vodka.”

“Here, have a whisky.” He handed him a glass. “Drink it. Drink it fast and then weep it out of you. Wail and weep—talk if you like. Say anything that comes into your head.”

“I loved her,” said John. “She was what I've always wanted, and now she's dead.”

“She was murdered,” said Greenbloom, “strangled.”

“Yes, she was—strangled.”

“What you have always wanted was strangled,” repeated Greenbloom. “Aren't you angry?”

John put down his full glass. “Yes, I am.”

“Are you
very
angry?”

“Very!”

“No, you are not. If you were angry you would not be weeping.” He came closer and lowered his voice. At this moment he was no more than a voice. He seemed to be like that voice which is insistent in the silence and darkness that precedes sleep. John heard him speaking from some place deep within his own head, and what was said between them
was said between John and some other remoter part of himself. “If I were the one,” the voice whispered, “the man in the cave, the man you met on the moors, if I were that man and you were alone with me in this room, what would you want to do to me?”

John looked in the direction he remembered. “Kill you,” he said.

“Well, why don't you?” Greenbloom hung beside him like a dummy, his arms loose and lax at his sides. “Why don't you stop weeping and kill me when I
am
the man?”

“Because you're
not
the man, you're only a Jew friend of my brother's—and because—”

“Go on.”

“Because it wouldn't do any good. She'd still be dead.”

“Exactly!” said Greenbloom, standing suddenly straight. “
She
would still be dead, and
you
would still be alive?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose then, that I am the man, and I kill
you
. Would that be better?”

John considered it; if somebody killed
him
he would be unable to know that Victoria was dead; leaving aside all thoughts of heaven or hell which did not seem very real at the moment, he would be freed of feeling for her, and of wanting what he had lost.

“No,” he said, “that would be worse. As long as I'm alive, she's alive too in a way, inside me; but if I am killed—”

“If you are killed,” Greenbloom interrupted slowly, “what you have always wanted will have ceased to exist, because you will not be there to want it.”

Through the whisky and the vodka, through the grey indistinctness of the room, beyond the sagacious little face confronting his own, he saw it clearly: the negation of a negation, an all-encompassing emptiness in a state of appalling and vacuous equilibrium.

“Yes,” he said; “yes, you're right.” He nodded to himself, and suddenly shouted it out into the room. “You're right!
Greenbloom is right
!”

“Of course I am,” said Greenbloom. “I am right and you are fortunate; fortunate because you have known what it was you have always wanted without having taken any direct part in its destruction. The rest of us must wait.”

“Who?” asked John.

“
We
,” said Greenbloom, “the great majority who have still to know what we have always wanted.” Abruptly he limped out of the room and John followed him down the stairs leaving the door open behind him.…

After a dreadful journey in the open Bentley with the hood flapping and cracking beside them like a running battle, they drew up in front of the Luxor a little over an hour later. Greenbloom gave the commissionaire a pound note, and after telling him to see to the car, led them through the glass doors at a running limp.

He looked extraordinarily dapper: a thin penguin in the black and white of his dinner-jacket and boiled shirt; and the oddity and haste of his gait, the mobility of his small head swivelling from side to side without visibly affecting the remainder of his body, ensured that even in this environment he was both noticeable and noticed. But he passed through the standing people, dim figures in the softly illumined space, as though they had been only clothes hanging in a large cupboard.

Rachel and Kate Holly were seated uneasily by one of the low black tables in the farthest corner of the lounge, and in all save their patent relief at the arrival of Greenbloom and Michael, presented a sharp contrast to one another.

Rachel was small and expensive-looking with film-star teeth and finely plucked eyebrows over dark-blue eyes, whereas Kate Holly was a big-boned manly girl, curiously untidy in every detail of her person and manner. She smiled carelessly, talked and laughed generously, and had little bits of bedroom-fluff and loose golden hairs clinging to the shoulders of her cherry-coloured twin-set. John warmed to her
at once; she was obviously common, the sort of north-country girl to whom he was accustomed, the sort of girl Michael had always liked. He did not in the least blame him for wanting to go out with her though he thought it a little unfair of him to get her into a place like the Luxor with a girl like Rachel and a man as sophisticated as Greenbloom.

Greenbloom himself did not seem in the least surprised by her appearance. The fact that she was quite differently dressed from everybody in the hotel, that she and Rachel had obviously found very little to say to one another in their twenty minutes of waiting, and that she had a broad though indefinable country accent of some sort, weighed not at all with him. He shook her hand hurriedly gave her a deep smile and asked her what she would drink, all in a matter of seconds, and then without even glancing at Rachel fixed his impatient gaze on a passing waiter and ordered a bottle of champagne and a plate of lobster pâtés. This done he at last turned to Rachel and said:

“Well, what did you book for?”

From the security of the fur coat draped over the back of her chair, Rachel smiled up at him and then at the others.

“Iss-n't he a man?” she asked softly.

“He rings up at five o'clock, tells me to collect a woman—a complete stranger—change my clothes, and then book the best seats for the bess-t show in town, all in the same evening.” Beneath Kate Holly's chin she extended a wrist flashing with a tiny diamond-encrusted watch, and then continued, “Not only that, but he arrives twenty minutes late, makes no introductions of any ss-ort whatsoever, and then as arrogantly as a prince, he wants to know what I've booked for.”

Greenbloom snatched at the extended hand and glanced greedily at the watch.

“Like it?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, Horab, I do! It was lovely of you. Don't
you
think it's ni-c-ce, Michael?” She lisped and prolonged the word just a fraction. “Don't you think he's sweet and that I ought to forgive him when he gives me press-ents like this?”

Holding the scented hand in his own, Michael examined the watch a little gingerly. “Beautiful, Rachel.” He turned to Kate. “Beautiful, isn't it, Kate? and just right for a wrist like Rachel's. Have a look at it, John.”

John stepped forward, wanting desperately to say something impressive so that he might be rewarded by one of her soft sentences.

“I've never seen anything so small and so—so dainty.”

She smiled up at him. “Small and dainty—like me?”

“Yes,” he said, “that's what I meant.”

Her fingers tapped a little tattoo on the back of his hand, and then she withdrew the wrist, the diamonds and the fingers.

“Who is he?” she asked. “He's
very
young.”

“Mick's brother,” said Greenbloom, “but you are not to talk to him. He wants to be left alone.” He sat down on the arm of her chair. “Well, what did you book for?”

“She's booked for the play at the Haymarket. That actor with the nose,” said Kate Holly. “What's name of it, Michael?”

“You must mean Gielgud. I can't remember what he's playing in at the moment. Are you sure it was the Haymarket?”

“Of course I am.”

“Good heavens, it's not
Musical Chairs
? You haven't booked seats for that surely, have you Rachel?”

“And why not, Michael dear? It's the only play worth seeing. And I know that Horab will like it.”

“Is it hot?” asked Greenbloom. “Plenty of sex and luxuriance and no bedrooms?”

“Well,” she confessed, “it
has
got one. But you don't see it, really you don't, Horab.”

“Oh,” Greenbloom refilled his glass. “Drink up, everyone! Drink up! we're going to be late. You had better order a taxi, Mick. The Bentley's difficult to park, and the London police do not seem to like it.”

“You know, Horab, I don't honestly think we ought to
take John to see
Musical Chairs
,” said Michael, “he's far too young and I
am
responsible for him.”

“You're not,” said Greenbloom. “I've already told you that John is my idea, my guest. Only I am responsible, and perhaps in a minor degree, Rachel too, eh Rachel?”

“Yes, Horab, I like him.” She gave him another smile. “He's sweet, and he's going to be so good-looking, and he's
sso
sad.”

“And you heard her?—there's a
bedroom
.” Greenbloom spat the word out. “Where there's a bedroom there is no sex, none at all: all serious love-making is done elsewhere. So order the taxi, Mick, and stop worrying.”

Michael swallowed the remainder of his lobster pâté.

“The little lad can come with me,” he said. “We must show him the ropes. Now, come on John, I'll show you how it's done.”

As soon as they were out of earshot of the others, Michael took his arm and steered him down a long discreetly lighted corridor which led off at right angles from the entrance hall of the hotel.

“I thought we were going to get a taxi,” John said.

“We are. But first of all I want to talk to you, in the Gentleman's if we can find it.”

They turned another corner passed a number of closed doors and, unsuccessful in their search, were about to retrace their steps when they saw two business men emerge from the last door on the right. They looked clean and pleased with themselves.

“That must be it; they've got it written all over them.” Michael smiled for the first time. “That's what I hate about Horab's taste in hotels; they're always so respectable. Myself, I like a nice little pub with the word ‘
Gentlemen
' written up where everyone can see it.”

They pushed open the door, only to find themselves in a narrow tiled passage which ended in another door in which was set a square glass panel. Through it they saw a glowing interior in which one or two black and ponderous figures
glided slowly about their business like fish in an aquarium. Michael paused.

“Confound it! I believe this must be the hairdressing saloon.”

John peered through the glass.

“No,” he said, “I don't think so. There's a chap having his shoes cleaned.”

Michael pushed open the door and there came to them the mingled odour of pine and camphor and the busy sound of running water.

“Ah!” said Michael as he hurried ahead. “We're on the track.”

They crossed the outer sanctum or foyer where a shoeblack was hard at work on the feet of another business man, traversed an archway, and reached a long amber-lighted room almost completely filled with hand-basins and looking-glasses. At the far end of it were two closed swing doors bright with chromium and glass. With a final gesture of impatience Michael rushed across the intervening space and dived between the doors. John followed him as he made straight for the nearest of a group of glazed white stand-ups.

They were beautiful and it struck him that people were very dull to take them so much for granted. No one ever mentioned them in essays or poems and he supposed that nobody ever would, though Rupert Brooke had come the nearest to it when he talked about the “keen impassioned beauty of a great machine”. These
were
a great machine, they seemed to stretch in all directions as though they had been designed to accommodate an army. Each was equipped with a shining copper pipe a transparent reservoir of disinfectant and a brass nozzle which at regular intervals sprayed perfumed water down its flawless face. At the bottom was a smooth slopping gutter spanned by precise metal bridges and guarded in front by a frosted glass plate set at an angle so that it might protect the shoes of patrons from any least spot of moisture from above. The atmosphere was religious and John found himself thinking in whispers as he took up his position beside Michael.

“I must say they do these things well at the big pubs,” Michael said. “I should imagine you could get anything done here from a manicure to a Turkish bath.”

“That's just what I was thinking. It's got a sort of holy atmosphere like a cathedral.”

Michael looked shocked. “Scarcely that, laddie, we mustn't mix our metaphors! If anything, it's more in the pagan tradition, like the Roman vomitoria; and quite right too, when one considers that it is intended to serve a function inseparable from that of the Bacchic.”

“Does that mean drinking?”

“Yes, but it was merely an observation, and there isn't time to discuss it now.” Michael moved away in the direction of the chromium-plated doors. “Horab may follow us at any minute; for some reason of his own he seems bent on separating us. Look here, how much money did you say you'd brought with you?”

“I told you,” said John defensively. “I haven't brought any—I've got none.”

Michael extracted a ten-shilling note from his breast pocket and handed it to him.

“Here! it's a nuisance, but you'd better take this. You can pay me back in the holidays.”

John took the note suspiciously. “What's it for?”

“It's to get you back to Oxford.” Against the background of the glass Michael regarded him very seriously. “Don't worry about paying me back for the moment, because really this is Horab's money and he doesn't like people badgering him about debts.”